


Echoes

by one_windiga



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Crossing Timelines, Gen, M/M, Timey-Wimey, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-18 18:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_windiga/pseuds/one_windiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John dreams."</p>
<p>John and Sherlock both remember their lives in Victorian England, but neither knows the other does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

John dreams.

(He always remembers these dreams. Other dreams wisp away in the light of the morning sun, leaving nothing but shadows and forgetting, but these stay with him, stitched into his skin.)

He dreams of carriages and cobblestones, of diamonds and dockworkers and threats of the gallows. He dreams of pipes and fog and gaslit streets. He dreams of a London that is familiar, but alien, streets and landmarks missing, the skyline strangely low and sprawling.

He dreams of himself.

(But it’s not really himself, is it?)

His dream self is taller, stouter, has a moustache kept in pristine condition. He likes jam (John hates it) and avoids lemons (John puts them in everything). But he is a doctor, a soldier, a friend, a son, a brother, everything that John is and somehow everything that he is not at, all at the same time. It’s like looking into a funhouse mirror and seeing himself, stretched and bent and broken in all the wrong places, but still him.

(He thinks.)

His dream self spends all of his time in the company of another man, spindly and tall, pointy where he is round, dark and pale contrasts where he is beige. The man wears top hats with ease (distantly John recognizes that this is ridiculous, but it never is in the dream) and wanders around London with an air of confidence and superiority.

John knows it is Sherlock. He doesn’t know how, but he does. (He knows it with the same sureness that he knows he has five fingers attached at his hands, ten toes attached at his feet, that the sun will rise in the east, and that when he opens his eyes, the sky will be blue.)

Sometimes he loses track of whether he’s dreaming or awake, in those moments just after the alarm beeps and he feels himself rising up out of layers of cobwebbed sleep. In the dreams, he can feel the grit under his fingernails when he helps his dream companion dig for clues. He can smell the pipe tobacco his friend smokes. He can feel the dryness of his chapped lips when they kiss, hidden locked in their flat.

But it feels real in the mornings, too, the stretch and snap of nitrile gloves, the scent of burnt toast from the kitchen, the soft scratch of jumpers on his skin.

(Is he drowning, or is he surfacing?)

(He’s not sure.)

Beside him, Sherlock dreams.


End file.
